Sacramento songwriter Tré Burt is one of a talented group of musicians today who uses his personal experiences and perspective to reconnect folk music with its African American and protests roots. In the process, he also goes into territory that’s sometimes unexpected. Like his affinity for country and folk singer-songwriter John Prine.
“Like his late label mate and songwriting hero John Prine, Burt showcases his poet’s eye for detail, surgeon’s sense of narrative precision and his songwriters’ ability to transpose observation into affecting verse. You, Yeah, You is a cohesive body of work that illustrates the ever expanding space in which Tré Burt’s voice belongs.”
For this edition of Saturday Soundtrack, we’ll explore the music of Tré Burt, who records on Prine’s Oh Boy Records label. Like his hero who famously came to songwriting after delivering the mail in Chicago, he comes from a working-class background, in Burt’s case as a maintenance technician servicing airplanes at SFO International Airport and taping boxes as a UPS worker. One of the more direct associations with Prine’s legacy is Dixie Red from Burt’s most recent album. Burt describes the connection this way.
“I prayed under an old oak tree in my neighborhood a lot for John Prine and his family while he was in the hospital last year. In the days following his passing I was mostly silent and listened to The Tree of Forgiveness non-stop. One night, I was standing on my porch looking at the full moon through a break in the trees over my street. It was especially silver and awfully large. The moon looked as if it were signaling John’s safe arrival to the other side. I felt privileged to witness this message sent for his family. ‘Dixie Red’ is a southern-grown peach and that line from ‘Spanish Pipedream’ has always been so potent to me. So I used a peach as imagery to represent John’s body of work he left behind for all of us.”
“Boundless in the evergreen waters / Gently down the stream / Green River knows you as its father” is a nod to Prine’s “Paradise” and his final resting place in the Green River in Kentucky’s Muhlenberg County. It’s a fittingly reverential ode to the immensity of Prine’s songwriting and legacy.
Tré Burt wrote his protest anthem, Under the Devil’s Knee, in 2020, in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and the unending police violence across the country. It features other African American singers from the new folk tradition: Allison Russell, Sunny War and Leyla McCalla.
“He came back after 2 years / lookin for a job but got wrapped back up in bullshit/ pled guilty to the law / George came outta prison with his head on straight / teachin’ all the neighborhood children the good ol christian way / till his life was taken from him / for no reason but his race / on the twenty fifth of May”
Under the devil’s knee oh lord, / I’m under the devil’s knee / screamin’ “I cannot breathe” oh lord, / from under the devil’s knee“
Real You is from Burt’s first Oh Boy album, Caught from the Rye.
“If I should say to her farewell / It’s just because I cannot tell / Is it her or I who is hidden in the dark / When her eyes close, mine open / Want the real you now / For the real you now”
In this mini concert from Paste Studios recorded in September of this year, Burt plays three songs live off his most recent You, Yeah You album.
Tré Burt is playing at the DC9 club in Washington on December 1st with Katie Pruitt. Both are worth your time.
Yesterday, November 11th, was celebrated as Veterans Day in the U.S. It used to be called Armistice Day. On that day in 1918, the major fighting of World War I ended. It was when, Kurt Vonnegut has written, “millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.”
“As the moment of the armistice approached, a few soldiers continued to skirmish, and Price’s company set out to take control of the small town of Havre. As they crossed a canal to their target, a German gunner hidden in a row of houses tried to stop them. Once safely across, just ten minutes before the armistice, the Canadian patrol began to look for the German soldier who had harassed them. They found no one but civilians in the first two homes they searched. And then, as they stepped back into the street, a single shot hit Price in the chest. He fell into the arms of his comrade, who pulled him back into the house they had just left. As Price died, German soldiers cleared their guns in a last burst of machine-gun fire that greeted the armistice.
Price’s life ended just two minutes before the Great War was over.
Even at the time, Price’s death seemed to symbolize the pointless slaughter of WWI. When an irony of history put Price in the same cemetery as the first Allied soldier to die in the conflict, disgusted observers commented that the war had apparently been fought over a half-mile of land. In the years after the war ended, much was made of George Price, the last soldier to die in the Great War.“
But Richardson also wants us to remember the man who pulled the trigger, who decided — knowing that peace was only two minutes away — to take another life and deny him a future. It was legal. It was also surely, she writes, immoral.
“He went back to civilian life and blended into postwar society, although the publicity given to Price’s death meant that he must have known he was the one who had taken that last, famous life in the international conflagration. The shooter never acknowledged what he had done, or why.
Price became for the world a heartbreaking symbol of hatred’s sheer waste. But the shooter? He simply faded into anonymity, becoming the evil that men do.“
Political theorist Hannah Arendtcoined the phrase “the banality of evil” after watching the 1961 trial of Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann. “Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet — and this is its horror — it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world. Evil comes from a failure to think.”
We’re also reminded on this day of what the leader of the Republican Party, Cadet Bone Spurs, really thinks about those who gave up their life for this country. “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” Jeffrey Goldberg quotes Donald Trump as saying in 2018 when he refused to visit the World War I Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris. West Point graduate Lucian K. Truscott IV reminds us that Trump blamed rain for the visit’s cancellation, claiming that his helicopter couldn’t fly and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him to the ceremony. Neither claim was true.
Donald Trump is the leader of a Republican party that, as Truscott notes, “isn’t a political party anymore. It’s a safe deposit box filled with grievance and anger and hate.” But Donald Trump didn’t make this once proud party what it is today. As is his custom, he only showed the ugliness behind the veil when you pull back the curtain. Last Tuesday, former United States Senator Max Cleland, a distinguished veteran, passed away. Senator Cleland left his arm and both legs in Vietnam. He was dishonored by evil men in the Republican Party in the 2002 mid-term elections as being soft on terror, well before Donald Trump came on the scene. In a similar vein, former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, another distinguished veteran decorated for valor who bravely spoke out against the Vietnam War, was dishonored during the 2004 presidential campaign by the same evil men.
Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote of Armistice Day in the preface to Breakfast of Champions.
“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Rest in peace, George Lawrence Price, and all the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for good over evil.
More to come…
DJB
Image: Remembrances for D-Day 2019 in the British village of Chipping Campden (photo by DJB)
Truth be told, it was the subtitle that was the real appeal. In my third stage of life, pilgrimages have a certain allure. Reading about others’ journeys can be enlightening, sowing seeds for personal reflection and encouraging us to seize the day.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent books and articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy.
Three Simple Lines is part poetry, part history lesson, part travelogue. Mostly it is memoir of a writer’s pilgrimage, from Goldberg’s introduction to the form in 1976 by Allen Ginsberg to her study of the masters of haiku. From her visits to Japan to take in the places and spirit that drove masters such as Basho and Yosa Buson, to her return home to join a haiku writing class. She wants to experience these places and this work through “bare attention, no distractions, pure awareness.”
Goldberg is a master storyteller, and her capturing of details is part of what makes this book come alive. Sometimes it is a scene as simple and frivolous as the description of the “kissing couple” sharing their love as her tour group waits for a morning train.
“The young couple are at it again. One long tender kiss, arresting lip-on-lip action. This is a kiss that leaks last night’s love, spreading it all over the morning. I am so happy they came along. What’s better than a good, lingering canoodle?”
Delightful detail also shows up in her description of the landscape and atmosphere as she travels to a distant temple. From my short time in Japan, this feels right.
“We keep climbing — my calves are burning — and come to a raised wooden walkway and then occasional wooden bells, which I know are used to scare away bears. When I reach one, I ring it hard.
We keep walking in silence, hearing the creak of the wooden planks in each step. It’s late and the air is cold. We are in ebony shadows that swallow up the giant cryptomerias. The walk ends in a wide path through groves of tall bamboo, which draw our gazes up to the entrance of Chuson-ji. It has appeared out of nowhere, at the top of Mount Kanzan.”
There is one passage that, to me, speaks eloquently of why people go on pilgrimages. Goldberg has been to Buson’s grave, and she wants to read the group something he had written.
“‘What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or to acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire.'”
Three Simple Lines is a beautiful book, both thoughtful and illuminating. There are numerous examples of this shortest of creative writing throughout, including several pages from Chiyo-ni, one of the few women to be recognized as a haiku master. I’ll leave you with one from Chiyo-ni, written after the death of one of her mentors, touching on her familiar theme of impermanence.
“sad, so sad / to miss the plum flower / before it fell”
More to come…
DJB
Images of temple grounds at Toko-ji in Hagi and bamboo grove in Japan by DJB
To live into who we really are, we have to stop living our lives trying to satisfy the dictates of other people.
Out of all life’s lessons, this one has proven especially difficult in my personal journey. We are bombarded with the opposite of this truth almost from the moment our mothers deliver us from the womb. Yet the reality is fairly simple to acknowledge, if not implement, when we stop and consider our past and the hoped-for future.
“To be alive is the biggest fear humans have,” writes Don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements. “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are. …We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.”
Miguel Ruiz calls this the “domestication” of humans. We initially develop concepts of what makes up a man or a woman based on what others tell us. We hear about the type of acceptable behavior expected of humans. And, he adds, “we also learn to judge: We judge ourselves, judge other people, judge the neighbors.” We establish punishment and reward in our minds based on the beliefs we have accumulated and accepted. In today’s world, too many of those beliefs come from online sources.
Having grown up wanting to please parents, teachers, bosses, partners, and some undefined tribal rules, I have come to find that I developed rationales and excuses for why I live the way I do. Those justifications are easy, but that doesn’t make them right.
Of course, the uncovering of our personal story is never just an individual story. Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of Poetry Unbound, notes that ours is always a community story, it’s a story of many “we’s.” Yet experience tells me that when we face our oft-hidden agreements honestly, we can change our understanding and personal dreams that may have been set by the larger community. I have tried to do this with gender roles, judgement, and new ways of thinking about perfection that alters my approach to punishment and reward.
Published more than twenty years ago but still relevant today, Miguel Ruiz’s short book suggests that everything we do is based on thousands of agreements we have made — agreements “with other people, with God, with life” and, most importantly, with ourselves. In these agreements we learn to tell ourselves who we are, what we can do, how to behave, and what to believe. We lump these together and call them our personality, as if it is set into our DNA. Yet too many of these personal agreements come from the dictates of others or worse, a Facebook algorithm, and are self-limiting.
His four agreements to move beyond those restrictions are simple:
Be impeccable with your word
Don’t take anything personally
Don’t make assumptions
Always do your best
Simple, yes, but there is a lifetime of learning in the living. The idea that your word “is the power you have to create” pushes me to explore the many ways I use words. Taking things personally, Miguel Ruiz suggests, “is the maximum expression of selfishness, because we make the assumption that everything is about ‘me.'” When we make assumptions, we too often believe they are the truth. Doing your best is important, especially when we accept that what is best is constantly changing because everything is alive and changing.
This doesn’t mean we can do what we want without consequence. Instead, accepting the fact that we should take responsibility for our actions without judging or blaming ourselves puts the focus where it belongs.
“Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life….Expressing what you are is taking action….Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward.”
Epictetus said something similar when he suggests we focus on what is ours alone to avoid blaming the fates and other people. When we do that, “no one will ever be able to coerce or to stop you.”
Stop fearing life and the dictates of others. Focus on what we can control: ourselves.
One of the last upholders of the African American ring shout, the McIntosh County Shouters “keep the faith, form, and fervor of the generations-old tradition rooted in their small community of coastal Georgia.” In this week’s Saturday Soundtrack, we’ll examine the work and music of this acclaimed group.
“The McIntosh County Shouters are the principal, and one of the last, active practitioners of one of the most venerable African American song and movement traditions — the “shout,” also known as the “ring shout.” The ring shout, associated with burial rituals in West Africa, persisted among African slaves and was perpetuated after emancipation in African American communities, where the fundamental counterclockwise movement used in religious ceremonies integrated Christian themes, expressed often in the form of spirituals. First written about by outside observers in 1845, and described during and after the Civil War, the shout was concentrated in coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia.
These shouting songs “have resisted slavery, strengthened spirit, and left us a cultural keystone for the future,” notes the group on their website.
I first heard the Shouters on the eTown show, so we’ll begin with the moving Blow, Gabriel, one of the tunes from that live performance.
“The 20th century’s greatest collector of American folk-music recordings, Alan Lomax, once said, ‘The Georgia Sea Islands are the home of the American song’.
Lomax first recorded the Georgia Sea Island Singers in 1935 with writer Zora Neale Hurston. Lomax returned to the Georgia sea islands to record the group again in 1959. But the Sea Island Singers dissolved around 2006, leaving the McIntosh County Shouters as the last of their kind. It was the legendary founder of Folkways Records, Moses Asch, who first recorded the Shouters in 1983. The resulting album — still in print — was called “Slave Shout Songs From the Georgia Coast.” The Shouters practice the “ring shout” — a hypnotic counterclockwise shuffle accompanied by call and response singing, the percussion coming only from clapping hands and sticks beating drum-like rhythm on a wooden floor. But notably, during their performances, the McIntosh County Shouters do not cross their feet. Why? That would be considered dancing.“
Move Daniel shows this call and response song pattern, along with the percussion sounds of feet and sticks as the women in the group move in this shuffle pattern.
In 2017, Smithsonian Folkways recorded Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast in association with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where the Shouters sang at the museum’s opening. I Wade the Water to My Knees is from that album.
Next is a beautiful trailer put together for the record by Smithsonian Folkways explaining more of the background for the shout. It includes interviews with several of the group members. Shouts often took place around holidays. One of the major times for shouting, as we hear in the video, was after midnight every year on “Watch Night,” which commemorates gatherings of African-Americans on New Year’s Eve in 1862, who came together to await President Abraham Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Adam in the Garden is a short clip that shows the shuffle of the ring shout. and Religion, So Sweet is another of the performances from the eTown show.
Of course, ring shouts grew from burial rituals, so topics of death and judgement are prevalent, such as in The Sign of the Judgement.
I see the sign (Hail) / I see the sign (Hail) / I see the sign / Hail lord time draw nigh
The sign of the judgement (Hail) /The sign of the judgement (Hail) / The sign of the judgement / Hail lord time draw nigh
Sign in the fig tree (Hail) / Sign in the fig tree (Hail) / Sign in the fig tree / Hail lord time draw nigh…
It May Be the Last Time is another shout song about moving through death. You hear it in the short video documentary above and also in the Folkways album. The eTown folks incorporated it very nicely in a medley to wrap up their show. The Shouters join the finale and bring down the house at about the 3:30 mark of the video.
“It may be the last time we sing together / It may be the last time I don’t know /
It may be the last time we sing at all “
As we move into a festive time of year, many will feel the pain of the loss of those they love at a deeper level. The traditions and music of the Shouters can remind us that those who have gone before us felt the same pain, and have done so for centuries often under very difficult conditions.
The McIntosh County Shouters are not currently performing, due to the pandemic. But in the typical caring fashion that grows out of their community, faith, and tradition, the website notes that they continue to “pray for those who are sick and the families who are caring for them.”
We could all do the same, out of our own beliefs and traditions, as we continue to battle a deadly, worldwide virus.
The little girl looked up at her teacher with a question as sincere as it was naive.
“Does the weather man get paid when he’s wrong?”
My wife enjoys telling that story from decades ago, when weather forecasting was not as reliable as it is today. It is story of young innocence. It is also a story of the budding realization we all encounter when we come face-to-face with the fact that those with responsibility and authority, those who have the microphone, are often wrong.
What if you applied that question to “experts” in other fields with prediction success rates to rival the weather forecasters of old?
We just had an off-year election in the U.S. As is always the case in the odd-numbered years following a presidential election, the voters in Virginia and New Jersey go to the polls to elect governors for a four-year term. Many cities also elect their mayors on the same cycle.
Over the past 40 years, here is what has happened in those two states in the first year of a new president’s term:
2021 – Joe Biden (D) is in his first year as president. Virginia elects a Republican governor. New Jersey reelects its Democratic governor in a close race, the first time a Democrat has been reelected in NJ in 44 years.
2017 – Donald Trump (R) is in his first year as president. Both Virginia and New Jersey elect Democratic governors.
2009 – Barack Obama (D) is in his first year as president. Both Virginia and New Jersey elect Republican governors.
2001 – George W. Bush (R) is in his first year as president. Both Virginia and New Jersey elect Democratic governors.
1993 – Bill Clinton (D) is in his first year as president. Both Virginia and New Jersey elect Republican governors. (Seeing a pattern here? *)
1989 – George H.W. Bush (R) is in his first year as president. Both Virginia and New Jersey elect Democratic governors.
1981 – Ronald Reagan (R) is in his first year as president. Virginia elects a Democratic governor. New Jersey elects a Republican governor by a margin of less than 2,000 votes.
What happened last Tuesday is that Democrats actually outperformed the normal expectations based upon the historical pattern. But instead of that story, we were told that with “surprise losses” the “Democrats were in disarray” (a phrase that may be trademarked by the New York Times).
The losses were only a big surprise to those who don’t know their history. Both states, evenly divided politically, have regularly gone with the opposite party in off-year elections over the last four decades.
The Times seemed to understand that pattern in 2009, during Obama’s first term in office, when the newspaper had only a single piece of analysis on the races in Virginia and New Jersey. Somewhere along the way they lost that knowledge. Journalist Eric Boehlert, who studies the press, noted on Wednesday that the Times had already posted at least 9 articles about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe’s loss last night in Virginia.
Meanwhile, some of the election news was good for progressives and people of color.
Progressive Michelle Wu became the first woman and the first person of color to win the mayorship of Boston in 199 years.
Democrat Eric Adams became New York City’s second Black mayor.
Cities across the country elected Democrats of color.
Three Michigan towns — Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck — elected their first Muslim mayors Tuesday.
The promised swamping of local school boards by anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-CRT candidates really only worked in districts that are already heavily Republican.
Judd Legum notes that 2022 will be very different than 2021, because politics is much more dynamic than the coverage suggests. Those “surprise” losses may portend dark days ahead for the Democrats. Or they may not. As Legum reports, nationally famous pundits and reporters are wrong all the time. And they still get paid.
I am not innocent or naive, understanding that those who are in positions of public responsibility and who have the microphone often behave badly. But when you consider how often the political coverage of the news is wrong, one may want to ask an updated version of the little girl’s question.
There is much of consequence to cover in the news. Our democracy is under attack, several people who participated in the violent coup attempt at the Capitol on January 6th were just elected to public office, and Senate Republicans have filibustered a motion to begin debate on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, to name just a few news items. It would be helpful to our understanding of these events if the incentive system for the press was not so focused on showing divisiveness and short-term political warfare. Political fortunes shift quickly. Building things of value takes time.
Perhaps we could have less coverage of the political horserace and more on the ideas and goals behind those things being built to help ordinary Americans.
More to come…
DJB
*Hat tip to Rachel Maddow for pointing out the pattern.
What is the lifelong baseball fan to do when you have two problematic franchises in the sport’s championship showcase? One team’s players have had serious issues around fair play. The opposing team is composed of likable players, but their owner has made terrible decisions for his team, baseball, and the city.
And both fan bases can be intolerable.
This Weekly Reader, focused on the World Series, features links to recent articles about those games that grabbed my interest.
I watched the 2021 World Series without any real rooting interest, but did suggest that Atlanta most resembles the Washington Nationals from 2019. Their slow start to the season followed by a hot second half, generally likeable players, and low expectations were all similar to the Nats. Fashion accessories went from rose colored glasses (2019) to pearls (2021). Also, like the Nats of 2019 they vanquished the mighty Dodgers this year.
Atlanta entered the World Series playing with house money, while all the pressure was on the Astros. So what did we see?
The good will be short
Congratulations to Atlanta — The first championship since 1995 is a big deal. And like the 2019 Nationals, Atlanta not only defeated the Dodgers but they also took down a strong Houston team.
Brian Snitker — The Atlanta manager is a baseball lifer who toiled in minor-league oblivion for years before getting his chance to manage in the show. He made the most of it.
Freddie Freeman — Atlanta first baseman Freddie Freeman has a well-deserved reputation as a Nats killer. He is also one of the nicest people in the game and apparently he loves to chat-up opposing players when they reach first base. If there is any position where you want a sociable extrovert, then first base is it.
Dusty Baker — Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker is, by all accounts, a gem of a person who was given the difficult task of trying to be the lovable face of an unlovable team. His Hall-of-Fame-worthy career doesn’t require winning a World Series as a manager. Of course, he’s been in the World Series before, and the memory I like from that fall classic is different from the Game 6 incident most people bring up.*
The youngsters — We were also able to see some other great players who made me smile this postseason, like Houston’s Yordan Alvarez and Luis Garcia and Atlanta’s Jorge Soler and Ozzie Albies.
Then, there is “bad for baseball” bad
Front office data nerds don’t care about fans — That’s the conclusion one gets from watching this World Series. In Game 3, Atlanta pulled its pitcher, Ian Anderson, after five innings. In today’s game it happens all the time.
Anderson is 23 years old and had only thrown 76 pitches. He still had gas and wanted to stay in. But we are watching the game change in ways that don’t bode well for building a new fan base. Barry Svrluga, writing in The Washington Post, put it this way:
“Baseball on a given night in a particular ballpark is at war with baseball as a sport that was once the national pastime. What’s good for a manager to win an individual game — backed by reams of data from his front office — is bad for baseball as a product to be voraciously consumed by fans.“
Every fan of baseball knows that Don Larsen has thrown the only no hitter (a perfect game, no less) in the World Series. Anderson was most likely not going to throw a no-hitter in Game 3. For the sake of the game and for the fans, however, Anderson should have gone back out for the 6th. Yet the data grunts have the stats to ” prove” why that’s the wrong decision. But their “right” decision is bad for baseball.
The length of games. — The only thing longer than a DJB blog post** is a major league game in 2021. They are slow and start too late, but most of all they are too damn long. I fell in love with Houston’s José Urquidy in Game 2 because he caught the ball from the catcher, got his sign, and threw his pitch. No fuss. Just do it. That game came in at the rocket-like pace of 3 hours and 11 minutes. Too many games now bump up against, or go over, 4 hours. I’ve not been in favor of a pitch clock in the past, but my opinion has changed. Put them on a 15 second clock so batters won’t have time to fidget with their batting gloves, pitchers won’t have time to wander around the infield, and I’ll get to bed at a reasonable hour. Again, Barry Svrluga at The Washington Posthas a great piece on this issue.
Finally, there is bad at the existential level…which turns into ugly
I don’t want game announcers Joe Buck and John Smoltz talking about the over/under on the number of strikeouts a pitcher may get — You’ve heard this before, so I don’t need to say more.
The Astros have a well-documented history of egregious cheating. As well as obnoxious fans — While the owner (mostly) did the right thing early in 2020 when the manager and GM were fired, none of the players of this “player-directed” scheme was punished. In fact, they were allowed to keep their 2017 World Series title and make tens of millions of dollars. There are multiple pieces on why you can’t forgive the Astros for cheating. And their fans, who didn’t even know Houston had a baseball team six years ago, now act like they are god’s gift to the world.
But as Kevin Blackistone writes, Atlanta may be even worse, at least at this level — Atlanta has a team full of great players, but as Adam Kilgore and Chelsea Janes note, it also has an offensive nickname and that stupid tomahawk chop. Period. Full stop. We’ve known forever that they need to change the name and get rid of the chop, but their owner has retrenched in the age of white grievance, and many of the fans have joined in that defiance.*** In this day, that alone makes their transgressions worse than Houston’s.
But there’s more. They built their new stadium in the wrong place for very troubling reasons. In the process they abandoned their African American fan base.
Pulitzer-prize winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger spoke to this issue in his wonderful book Ballpark. The fourth and very ominous period of ballpark design — sterile corporate campuses/amusement parks — is most easily seen through the terrible decision in Atlanta to move the team to Truist Park in the city’s far northern suburbs in 2017.
It was a move away from the city, public space, public transportation, and — most egregious from my point of view — communities of color. Goldberger describes Truist as “a mallpark as much as it is a ballpark,” and notes that what makes it different from most of the post-Camden Yards parks is that it “extends the entertainment zone outside the ballpark into a pseudo-urban neighborhood that has been created solely as a complement to the ballpark. A real city, by contrast, is “created over time, with its mix of different types of buildings, different kinds of neighborhoods, and, most important, different kinds of people.”
Bottom line: baseball has long been about making money for the rich owners. It has gotten worse in recent years, at the expense of building loyal, local support among a broad fan base.****
There are solutions to these problems, which are included in the links I’ve posted. Baseball will simply need to do what is right.
I’m not betting on that outcome.
Enjoy the winter.
More to come…
DJB
*In Game 6 of the 2002 series, Baker gave the ball to pitcher Russ Ortiz as he was leaving with a 5-0 lead. The Angels roared back to win 6-5. For my memory, there is a nice bit of baseball history. Darren Baker was drafted in the 10th round in 2021 by the Washington Nationals.
**I do have some sense of self-awareness.
***That all sounds familiar to Washington folks accustomed to suffering in the age of Daniel Snyder. And of course the former guy had to put in an appearance.
****Examples include:
Your team won’t make the playoffs just two years after winning a World Series (and you are only 3 games behind Atlanta at the time, which decided to go all-in for this year)? Well, trade the popular core of your team, including a sure Hall-of-Fame pitcher (Max Scherzer) and one of the two young stars of your team (Trea Turner) to shed salary and acquire prospects and to hell with the fan base.
Television (which pays those outrageous rights fees) wants prime time slots so they can sell almost three minutes of commercial time between innings? No problem, even if fans young and old can’t stay awake past midnight.
Clubs want to forget their sport’s own history of gambling and cheating to get in bed with betting sites that dislocate the joy in the game all for the money? Fine, let them in to turn broadcasts into one long gambling commercial. They’ve even pushed out the ED advertisements!
Owners want to thumb their noses at an African American fan base that has loyally supported the team since 1966? Sure, let them move to South Chattanooga.
The timely topic of the intent of the nation’s founders was turning over in my mind when I happened upon a quote by the Stoic philosopher Seneca. In response to a question about walking in our predecessors’ footsteps, he noted:
“I surely will use the older path, but if I find a shorter and smoother way, I’ll blaze a trail there. The ones who pioneered these paths aren’t our masters, but our guides. Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn’t been monopolized.”
The time-tested traditions of wise elders certainly merit our respect and consideration. But when we turn those predecessors into our masters, or attempt to make them masters over others, we are forgetting that their ideas were once new, controversial, and path-breaking. We have the same responsibility to think for ourselves.
After hearing an increasing number of politicians making arguments that start with “The Founders never intended…” she asserts, “Almost any argument that starts with those dreaded words is usually made in bad faith.” She provides two instances in which it’s appropriate to consider the founders’ intentions, but goes on to suggest that any attempt to apply 18th century ideology or values to the 21st century is inherently problematic.
This is obvious to historians. “The Founders almost never agreed. On anything.” The men (and they were all men at that time) were flawed humans, who understood their imperfections, and they even built a mechanism right into the constitution to amend it as better ideas surfaced. And then they used that process right from the get go. (Hello, Bill of Rights!)
We can best honor the founders, and other elders, by using their work as a guide, not as something cast in stone. They provided a path to change what isn’t working, and so much has changed from the time of the 18th century.
Historian Joseph Ellis has also taken on this false narrative of the infallibility of the founders, most directly in his book American Dialogue. There he notes that James Madison’s greatest achievement was recognizing that the Constitution presented a “framework for debate” and that “argument itself became the abiding solution.” The Constitution is an inherently “‘living document’ that successive generations interpret in light of changing historical circumstances.”
That understanding — supported strongly by Thomas Jefferson — provides the springboard for Ellis’s strong and sustained attack against the misconception of “originalism” as most proudly practiced by the late Antonin Scalia. In a scathing critique, Ellis takes apart Scalia’s one-sided opinions, and those of his conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court, as essentially a weapon to overturn liberal precedents. Justice William Brennan described originalism as “arrogance cloaked as humility.”
I love studying the past, believe that it has much to teach us, and continue to work to save some of the country’s most important places that link past, present and future generations together. But the past isn’t our master. We have to look at problems such as climate change, authoritarianism and anti-democratic voter suppression, racism, pandemics, cyber attacks, and more in 21st century terms and find solutions for today.
Historians can help us sort through fact and fiction. Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the damning memo by Trump loyalist John Eastman, outlining a pathway to destroy our democracy, and noted that we are facing an emergency. The Republican party, which “organized in the 1850s to protect the nation against those who would destroy it, has come full circle” she notes.
The nation’s founders — who set up our initial steps toward the more complete democracy we are now fighting to save — did have important things to say about authoritarianism. It is clear that the work to maintain democracy never ends. Our charge is to tackle the issues we face today, using the past as a guide but not our master.
Bringing Mary Home is a classic “ghost” hit by the Country Gentlemen, in part because the ending sneaks up on you. This version from a 1992 reunion show at Woodstock — featuring Eddie Adcock (banjo and backing vocals), the late John Duffy (mandolin and high tenor), the late Charlie Waller (guitar and lead vocal) and Tom Gray (bass) — is priceless. Yep, John Duffy’s pants are pretty scary on their own!
Last year I featured Ralph Stanley with his definitive version of O Death from the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? In this year’s roundup, let’s turn to Rhiannon Giddens with a version from her recent album, They’re Calling Me Home.
Giddens, with partner Francesco Turrisi, base this version on a different source — Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers. As the Bluegrass Situation (BGS) site notes, it is a good reminder of “just how much of American music and culture are entirely thanks to the contributions of Black folks.”
The Parting Glass is an Irish farewell song. “The singer must depart but where is he going? Does he simply have to leave the area or the town? Will he ever return? Or is he foreseeing that he does not have long to live and this really is the final farewell?”
It’s never made clear so we can interpret Freddie White’s version in our own way, depending on what suits our circumstances at any given time.
Murder and suicide ballads
Four pandemic tombstones, for those who trusted Tucker Carlson, didn’t trust the science, thought it was all a hoax, or self-treated with animal medicine. Each a spooky suicide story (in its own way).
Next up we have the Stanley Brothers singing Little Glass of Wine — a traditional mountain music murder/suicide ballad. The moral of this story: watch what drinks you accept from lovers!
The family bluegrass band Cherryholmes caused a stir with the modern murder ballad Red Satin Dress. I note the comment by the writer on the BGS website who pondered, “…with so many songs about murderous, deceitful women in bluegrass — the overwhelmingly male songwriters across the genre’s history couldn’t be bitter and misogynist, could they? Could they?”
Of course they could. If you have to ask you haven’t been paying attention.
Knoxville Girl is one of the classic murder ballads in the country/folk tradition. Here’s the Louvin Brothers languid version, which makes it creepier. In these songs the guys are always murdering “the girl I loved so well.” Jeez, guys, let me just say that’s not the way you express love.
Of course, leave it to national treasure Dolly Parton to recast murder and suicide ballads from the point of view of the abused, forgotten, and often murdered woman. The Bridge is a brilliant “sad-ass” Parton song*, focused on the last words of a pregnant woman about to jump to her death, on the spot she first kissed the lover who deserted her.
Also from BGS, here’s a take on Jake Blount’sWhere Did You Sleep Last Night.
“In the Pines” is one of the most haunting lyrics in the bluegrass lexicon, but ethnomusicologist, researcher, and musician Jake Blount didn’t source his version from bluegrass at all — but from Nirvana. That’s just one facet of Blount’s rendition, which effortlessly queers the original stanzas and adds a degree of disquieting patina that’s often absent from more tired or well-traveled covers of the song. A reworking of a traditional track that leans into the moroseness underpinning it.
Blount’s version, as another commentator notes, goes back to a more authentic version of the song, removing the aspects of a love story and revealing the harsher truth about the lynching mobs and sudden disappearances in the woods. Chilling but brilliant.
The devil’s way
We’ll end with a song written by Stan Jones in 1948 and originally recorded by Burl Ives the following year. Johnny Cash had a definitive version, and I’ve chosen a video from the 1990s with Cash and Willie Nelson trading the lead vocals; Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings singing the backup harmony; and the amazing Reggie Young playing killer guitar fills on (Ghost) Riders in the Sky.
An old cowboy went riding out one dark and windy day / Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way / When all at once a mighty herd of red eyed cows he saw / A-plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw
Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel / Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel / A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky / For he saw the Riders coming hard and he heard their mournful cry
Yippie yi yaaaay / Yippie yi ooohhh / Ghost Riders in the sky
Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat / He’s riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain’t caught ’em yet / ‘Cause they’ve got to ride forever on that range up in the sky / On horses snorting fire / As they ride on hear their cry
As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name / If you want to save your soul from Hell a-riding on our range / Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride / Trying to catch the Devil’s herd, across these endless skies
Yippie yi yaaaay / Yippie yi ohhhhh / Ghost Riders in the sky
Trick or treat!
More to come…
DJB
Image of werewolf from Pixabay. Image of ghost from Stefan Keller on Pixabay. Image of pandemic tombstones from DJB.
*Parton self-described some of her work from the early years as “sad ass songs.” In those works, she was often taking traditional murder ballads like Knoxville Girl and recasting them from the woman’s (i.e., the victim’s) point of view.
The speaker at the Smith Memorial Student Union building asked those in attendance if they knew where the name originated. When they were stumped, he told the story of young Michael Smith, who helped lead the Portland State University College Bowl trivia team to an underdog victory in 1965, only to die from cystic fibrosis shortly after graduating. When asked how he knew of this connection, the speaker — writer John Marr — replied that he had read about it on the prominent plaque outside the building. His motto is to “always read the plaque.”
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent books and articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy.
I was introduced to 99% Invisible several years ago by my son, a passionate enthusiast of cities. We share similar interests and he knew that the stories about the little known, often overlooked, but nonetheless fascinating aspects of our cities and towns would captivate me. He was right, and given that experience I grabbed a copy of this new book late last year.
The99% Invisible City is not a travel guide, but is instead a set of stories based around the various subsets that make up a city with a focus on problem-solving, historical constraints, and human drama. Here you will discover:
The meaning behind those seemingly ubiquitous red, orange, and yellow markings, spread out along our streets like graffiti. (Hint: think underground utilities.)
How engineers in 1920 took care of exhaust problems in the Holland Tunnel. (Hint: think beautifully designed ventilation buildings that have a Wrightian look and blend into the New York/New Jersey urbanscape.)
The traffic light that the authors believe is the most unusual, so much so that the city where it is located has a municipal park nearby with sculptured figures of kids with slingshots aiming at the light. (Hint: think about why the green is now on the top in this heavily Irish neighborhood.)
Image by Patrick Vale of the utility codes found on city streets
One can go on-and-on. This is an entertaining and informative book to sit with for a few minutes or a few hours. Each story is a maximum of three pages in length, usually interspersed with delightful graphics. Even if the reader is familiar with a particular topic, you nonetheless learn small facts to flesh out the meaning and humanity around our built environment. And there are plenty of great stories that are bound to surprise most readers.
Stories such as the tale of Audrey Munson, the first “supermodel” in the U.S. whose figure was used for statues in cities across the nation, usually on buildings from the Beaux Arts era. The three muses that sat in the lobby of the Hotel Astor — all patterned after Munson and all in the nude — came about after her mother gave the famous sculptor Isidore Konti permission to use her daughter as a model. Munson later called the set, “a souvenir of my mother’s consent.”
There are stories about municipal flags because Mars is a big fan of vexillography, or flag design. We learn that San Francisco installed over 200 large, underground cisterns following the earthquake and fire of 1906, to provide water in the event of future natural disasters. Who knew that Carmel, Indiana, has more than 138 roundabouts, saving the city money while reducing collisions by 40% and crashes with injuries by 80%? The piece on revolving doors and locks informs us that the most secure mechanical lock was developed by English inventor Josephy Bramah way back in the 1700s.
And the book also includes Andrew’s favorite story of how his friend’s mother —Diane Hartley — discovered a major structural design flaw in the famous Citicorp Center in Manhattan while trying to replicate engineering calculations for her thesis on the building. She didn’t know that her calculations had led the building’s engineers to confirm her concerns and then work to secretly reinforce the building in the middle of the night for three months. It all happened without public notice since there was a newspaper strike at the time.
This is a remarkable book for any lover of cities. Graphic designer, author, and friend Michael Bierut writes in a jacket blurb, “Just as Jane Jacobs did fifty years ago, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt provide a new way of seeing urban life, finding secrets and surprises behind every sewer grate, storefront, and street sign.”
Highly recommended.
More to come…
DJB
Image: To prove the point, I recently found this plaque, and the adjacent artwork, along my regular route for my morning walk. The angle was such that I didn’t notice it, until I made a conscious decision to “read the plaque.”
MORE TO COME... 